


Three Day Ride

by imna



Category: Assassin's Creed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:13:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5276192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imna/pseuds/imna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An escaped patient, a car thief, and a paranoid schizophrenic traverse New England.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

TOO LONG in the sun, he thought. _I’ve fallen asleep and lay too long in the sun._ Altair did not open an eye to confirm this because he knew it. He knew the delirium of fatigue, thirst, and fever when it caught him. He knew if he opened his eyes, he would see only madness.

The ground was shaking. Once, he stood upon an empty plain as a hundred score horsemen rode across, and it had felt like this. The collective din of those battle cries and war-horns sounded then as this distant roar sounded now- like some great beast bellowing for blood. 

_Move_ , he willed himself. The sound grew impossibly close, and strange- as if the horsemen had stopped yelling all at once, and started up again. The rock that cut his temple when he fell was now trembling on the quaking earth and rattling against metal. He grabbed there, thinking his sword- or the Apple- had got away from him. The iron he found was neither.

Altair opened his eyes, struggled to his feet, and fell again.

What he saw was this: no beast, though it charged like a mad horse. It was not a caravan, though it rolled on wheels and appeared to be connected one to the next. It resembled an English siege engine, cast in metal, and possibly concealing two hundred horses or more within. It charged onward, no more than two paces from him, and Altair saw that it followed a narrow path marked by long metal rods, its wheels perfectly aligned to them. A moment ago, he had grabbed one of these thinking it was his sword. He could have lost the hand.

The siege engine roared past as if it had forgotten him.

He lay on his back and stared at the sky. A shining cross flew overhead, small and white and slow. It too shrieked as it went, as though in agreement with the enormous metal caravan. 

_Move._

Ten minutes later, Altair got up and followed the train tracks.


	2. Prologue

THE AIR was warm and dry from heat trapped by the windows. Slanting sunlight caught dust particles floating in the tiny room. The man had grease on his hands and blue uniform pants, and his breath smelled of the morning's coffee, but the warm and the dry and the smells were pleasantly so.  
  
"Looks like about a week, maybe more if I have to order it." The man wiped his hands on a red oilrag, then gestured behind the register to an opened medicine cabinet, full of keys on hooks. "If you need something between now and then, we can lend you a car from the lot."  
  
She thought about it. Specifically, she thought about the car accident that brought her here in the first place, and the price tag of the replacement parts, and her checking account with its $163.19 balance.  
  
"That's okay," she said. "I don't need a rental. But thank you."  
  
The transaction was brought to a close after many offers of help and many polite, _really, no, but thank you_ s. The parts (and the bill) would be in by the end of the week and Maura would walk until then, and hope that this Friday’s paycheck would be a pretty one. She left the warm gas station and walked home, pondering the future walks to the bus stops that would take her to campus. The heat and the stairs tired her and the clock on the wall read 12:15.

 

.:.

Splotches of wet on wood, possibly water or blood from the siege engine. These puddles were the only trace of the metal thing that had rolled along the strange path Altair now followed.  
  
He dipped a gloved fingertip into one, tasted it, then spat. He scrubbed his tongue on a dirty sleeve and continued scrubbing until his mouth was thoroughly coated with dust, then took a pull from his nearly-empty waterskin and spat that out, too.  
  
Some kind of metallic poison, he decided. It was not the _rasaas_ that Assassins pour into the cups of their victims, but the taste was similar. How did the engine bleed so much of it, and move so quickly? It made no sense. The thing was not what it seemed.  
  
He looked far across the sea of green grass, to where the smoking engine had shrunk to a distant gray smudge on the horizon. He fixed on that point and followed the tracks until the gray smudge became a gray shape, and then until the gray shape resolved itself into a city wall. Altair followed the tracks until he realized this city, too, was not what it seemed.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _rasaas_ / رصاص // lead, sometimes called liquid silver. in the Middle Ages, it was commonly used for glazing chalices, and people could actually die from ingesting too much lead from the glazing on their fancy cups. the Assassins may have added a little extra to speed up the process.


	3. October 4, 2012

IT WAS seven minutes before the 106 bus would pull up to the Pleasant & Main stop and leave for campus, with or without her. _Today has sucked enough,_ Maura decided, and upped the pace from normal to near-powerwalk. She was just four blocks away and would jump in front of the damn thing before it left without her.

Police sirens screamed by. Two squad cars blew the red light and took a left, but a motorcycle cop halted at the intersection and hailed the foot traffic. It looked like he was turning people around, so she veered right and took a side street.

She went up two blocks and cut left, hoping the bus stop was outside the motorcycle cop’s range. Why the hell they’d be turning people away when the squad cars were long gone didn’t matter as much as getting to Pleasant & Main before the bus. No traffic stops or detours on this list of priorities, no sir. If the cop was ordering a cordon for a ‘suspected crime in progress’ on that block, she pretended she couldn’t hear it. 

She also couldn’t hear the sirens anymore, which was odd. She did hear squealing brakes, though, and the familiar _crunch_ of a car hood crumpling.

 _Probably some fall tourists._ She scoped out the accident as she went past, and yep, it was some sedan with New York plates. _Came to see the pretty leaves, then got lost when their GPS conked out downtown._ It was behind a yellow brick insurance building, down the L-shaped one-way with a dumpster at the elbow. Cars lined the curb where a sidewalk should be, making the narrow side street tricky for pedestrians and/or drivers in a rush. 

This one was the latter: the car had gone up the wrong way up the one-way, went over the curb, and hit the dumpster. She saw some guy inside, trying to crawl over the armrest from the back seat to the front. Maura paused.

“Hey, are you okay? Hello?”

She turned onto the narrow street and saw the driver door was open- did the driver really just ditch this guy? Or was this… she watched the sole occupant tangle with a headrest and lose. After groping around the dashboard, he ripped open the glove compartment and began shoving everything into his shirt. Papers, receipts, napkins, everything. Was this some drunk who just crashed his car? If so, how’d he get in the back seat?

“Hey, you alright in there?” Jeez, the whole rear windshield was shattered. The hood of the car was completely absorbed into the dumpster’s frame, but the front windshield seemed fine, aside from the red-

“Holy fuck, is that blood?” She stared at the red drops sprayed across the windshield. Driver’s side.

“Move the cart,” the guy said. Didn’t seem to be bleeding. Also didn’t seem to be the driver.

“Move what?” 

“Move the ca-” He threw himself flat across the seats so hard that he caught his head a whack on the door. 

Better than catching the bullet that pierced the windshield and entered the dumpster's carcass with a deafening _CLANG_. Maura screamed and dropped to the pavement.

“Run, run!” The guy hissed, pulling himself from the mangled driver’s side door and behind the dumpster wreckage. She made a beeline for the inside corner of the alley- it blocked her view of the shooter, sure, but it also blocked their view of her. The motorcycle cop was two blocks away, she could get his attention, _yeah, great plan, go go go._ No one’s getting shot and dying today, no sir. She beckoned to the drunk. “This way!”

He kept low, crossed the street in half a second, and crouched against the bricks with her. “There is a place to hide?” 

“No, but there’s cops down the street. Oh Jesus. Oh hell-” _can you please get your shit together,_ she admonished herself. “We just gotta get that far. To the cops.” 

“Cops. What is cops?” He spoke with a strange accent, and his breath reeked. Not alcohol, surprisingly. Smelled... not unlike the stuffy mechanic’s shop she left an hour ago. Something like… oil? Gasoline? 

Was this guy drunk on gas fumes? Was this even remotely important right now? 

“Cops. Police. Public protection with guns. You know? Cops?” Hell yeah, she was rambling as she scooted along the line of parked cars, out the one-way’s entrance, and back onto the street. “Gonna get some cops on this, gonna go home, gonna… not get shot. Gonna be fine.”

If Altair was worried about the shooting or the panicking guide, he didn’t show it. He smoothed the papers under his shirt into a less conspicuous lump, long strides keeping up with the girl’s nervous half-run, half-shuffle as she talked to herself about the cops and mudder-cycles. The busy streets were very empty, now. He did not know this place, but from his brief experience so far, this emptiness seemed unusual. Ahead was a man standing alone at a crossroads, black-armored and black-helmed below a strange network of ropes and lanterns, and the girl hailed him.

“He is the cops?” Altair grabbed her arm, halting them both. That man was the same as the other guards.

“Yeah, we’ll report the shooting and get the hell out of here. Safety now, car insurance later. OFFICER! HEY!” 

The cop clearly saw them coming and stayed where he was. Lazy traffic cops: Maura was unsurprised, though it didn't last long.

“We must go. These are the ones who chased me,” Without warning, he opened the glass door of the Gold Star Laundromat, sidestepped, and pulled the girl inside. The bells tied to the door jingled as it opened and closed. Maura stood frozen, unsure, suddenly realizing there was something _very wrong_ with this turn of events.

Her mind raced as he led them to the counter. _Drunk tourist not drunk. Crime in progress. And dodging the police._ She could: make a break for the outside, with all the cops, unseen shooters, and… and suddenly empty streets, and hope this was all a misunderstanding? Or stay in here with Mr. Suspected-Crime-in-Progress, who appeared genuinely baffled by the list of laundromat services posted on the wall behind the counter.

“You can lead us from here,” he said, nodding to the employee door that led to the back.

 _This guy for real?_ “Let go of me. I’m not going anywhere,” the panic was rising in her throat, coloring her demands in tones of fear. She pulled her arm free. He made for the back door, found it locked, and bent to inspect the handle.

“We cannot wait. I must find my brother and this city’s bureau before the cops discover us both. Now, lead us from here.” He fiddled with the strange lock and waited for any useful input from his guide, but none came. He turned to see her running for the glass door they’d used to escape the street. The dark guard from the crossroads stood on the other side of the glass, unsheathing a weapon. 

“Help me, this guy is fucking nuts, and _someone is shooting us!_ ” She yelled to the cop just outside the door, colliding with the glass and giving it a shove, realizing too late that the motorcycle cop might get hit as it swung open-

He did. In fact, he held it shut. Maura watched through the glass as he unstrapped his nightstick and spoke into the radio on his shoulder.

“Transport, head due east one block. Back entrance of the Golden Star. I’ve got the front door covered.”


End file.
